Winter Into Spring

Blog-buddy Gigi Leonard, who authors the lovely arts-&-crafts blog “The Roadside Scholar”, took this fabulous spur-of-the-moment photo of a woodpecker while out and about on a weekend that was mostly white for much of North America.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. For the next couple of days, the increase of the day’s length will be imperceptible, measured only in seconds, but by Christmas Day, less than a week after the solstice, the day’s length will already have increased by almost a full minute, and by New Year’s Eve it will have increased by over a minute. I am particularly fond of those days in late January and early February when the sunset has been pushed back even more and the combination of snow and late afternoon gives everything a blue glow, except for the clouds that catch the setting sun and streak magenta, gold and green across the sky.

This is a short poem I wrote to share with some friends on an e-mail list in lieu of sending cards this year:

It is again the Solstice.
Dawn breaks late and slow.
The sun will rise as if it would rather fall back below the horizon,
and finding no reason to climb any higher,
seeks the solace of the western hills as quickly as it can.
We are enrobed by darkness, embraced by cold, shrouded by death.
The stars harken to us with the cry that time itself has frozen still.

And then the world begins anew.

Thanks to Gigi for a perfect picture to go with the sentiment.

Related Posts:

• Solstice